Improvisation Italian-Style

Skirt Steak on Purslane with a Lemon Anchovy Vinaigrette

Alone on a warm evening in the not too distant past, I cooked myself a steak and opened a bottle of okay Sangiovese. Earlier that day I had picked up a bunch of purslane at the Greenmarket, and I decided to use it as a bed for my meager-looking skirt steak. What the hell. I wasn’t expecting much from the meal. But it turned out this was one of the best dinners of a year full of anxiety-packed, insoluble family issues. A solitary night, a chic but quickly assembled dinner, the swing of Gotan Project on my iPod. I started to feel pulled-together. It’s nice when that happens.

Skirt is a favorite cut of mine. It’s tender when cooked pink, has great flavor, and is easy to sear on a stove-top grill plate. I don’t eat a lot of steak, but I don’t have a problem with it. I’m also not overly concerned with saturated fat. Dietary thought on this subject is changing. The insulin assault on our bodies caused by sugar and carbs is possibly looking to be a bigger problem. My grandparents were brought up on olive oil and lard. That was the Southern Italian way. I’m sticking with it.

I’ve Italianized my steak dinner to the hilt, adding anchovies, capers, lemon, summer garlic, and fresh marjoram. Purslane, with its deep citrusy taste and moist texture, needs little dressing, so I left it in the nude, letting my steak juices and all the Italian flourishes trickle down, pulling the dish together.

But what exactly is purslane?

I love this strange, juicy, weed-like plant. It’s both lemony and peppery, best left raw or quickly sautéed to preserve its moisture. It’s actually a succulent, and you can find it growing on lawns and sometimes even up from cracks in sidewalks in the summer months. I treat it as an herb, throwing its stems into salads, scattering its leaves on a finished dish, or using it as an herby bed for meat or fish, as I’ve done here. It’s also full of Omega-3 fatty acids, the same healthful stuff you find in fatty fish, which makes it a good coupling with our supermarket grain-fed beef, which unfortunately has had most of its Omega-3 bred out of it.

A big handful of purslane, some of the thicker stems removed
6 cherry tomatoes, halved
A palmful of salt-packed capers, soaked in several changes of cool water and then well rinsed.

Season the steaks on both sides with the Aleppo, some salt, black pepper, and the sugar.

Set up a stove-top grill plate over high heat. While the grill is heating, whisk together all the ingredients for the vinaigrette.

Divide the purslane up onto two dinner plates. Place the cherry tomatoes around it.

Grill the steaks (no need for oil here) until seared on one side, about 2 minutes or so, depending on their thickness. Give them a turn, and grill until rare or medium rare (you really don’t want to go further than this, as skirt steak can get tough if overcooked).

Pull the steaks from the grill and lay them over the purslane. Spoon the vinaigrette over the steaks, and garnish with the capers.

I would also like to feel “pulled together” some day but it doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Entropy rules around here. I love this post because it’s not just another recipe but a little short story as well. Your recipes gets better and better as you personalize them with your own experiences. PS- I like skirt steak, too. Good for BBQ after marinating; great taco filler, too.

Thanks Michael, Maybe you need to, what’s the expression, move out of your comfort zone? That sometimes works for me. Some situations are for keeps, like caring for my miserable, ungrateful mother (well, at least until she departs), but some are not. Seems like you might have a few that are not. That’s good.

Welcome to Ericademane.com

I am a chef, food writer, and teacher who specializes in improvisational Italian cooking. I am the author of The Flavors of Southern Italy and Pasta Improvvisata, as well as Williams-Sonoma Pasta, which is available at Williams-Sonoma stores. A member of the Association of Culinary Professionals and the Italian-based International Slow Food Movement, I live in New York City. I offer private cooking classes, which you can learn about here.

Favorite Things

Dining with the Saints

Please check out www.novena.com for my monthly column "Dining with the Saints," which features recipes for saints' days. The beautiful, art-filled blog is written by Barbara Calamari and Sandra DiPasqua and includes the stories of the lives of saints and monthly novenas and prayers. They've written many books on the subject and really know their stuff. I, on the other hand, am a fraud, a Catholic lapsed all the way to atheism. But I love researching and creating great recipes to go with these amazing stories.

The Italian Recipe Exchange

Would you like to share one of your favorite Italian recipes with the world? Please click here to find out how.

Women with Fish

An ongoing series of photos of anything that can be considered "Women with Fish." If you have any photo you'd like to see in it, send it along to me, at edemane@earthlink.net.

Archival Articles

. . . containing hundreds of recipes are being posted as blog posts, dated back to when they first appeared. Look for them by browsing through the archival index ("Categories") above or by using the search window at the top of this page. Thanks for your patience.